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Origin of the Nebra sky disc
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Message 1.聽
Posted by Arcticvs (U3120042) on Thursday, 2nd February 2006
Sorry for my inadequate English as I am not a native speaker/writer but I hope you catch my point. So, I have recently learned some details of Finnish mythology and history and let me express my idea concerning the Nebra Sky Disc found few years ago. I believe it was 麻豆约拍 which produced an intriguing document on it. First some background:
1) Nebra sky disc has been dated as being 3600 years old. It seems to be a forged item out of copper and gold with sun, moon, stars and a stripe - assumed to be a sun bark - described in it. Also, it has been considered as an ancient calendar.
2) Georg Fabricius (1516鈥揓uly 17, 1571), German poet and historian describes in his work "Rome" that in Eisfeld, about 150 km from Nebra, there was a temple where people served an ancient god called Tuiscone. This god seems to be also called as Tuiskonen (Google -> you will get dozens of hits from Germany). The religion of the people was based on a huge explosion, that had caused lot of sorrow in their lands. Fabricius does not understand their language, obviously written somewhere, but mentions a word "Ilmo Terra Renet" as a name of a calendar of those people.
3) Tacitus (ca. 56鈥揷a. 117) tells that people in Germania 鈥渃elebrate Tuisto, a God sprung from the earth鈥.
4) German mythology knows a term 鈥済枚tterd盲mmerung鈥, meaning some kind of godly darkness.
5) Especially in the eastern part of Finland the surnames of the people are most ending with 鈥-nen鈥, like mine. You can verify this by opening a Finnish phone book... It also seems that this ending is exclusively used in Finland. See also the names in Finnish national epic Kalevala later.
6) A 20-80-ton iron meteorite has hit the Earth in Saarenmaa island, Estonia, around 4000 years ago (see, for instance, Baltic Times online, 6th of July 2005) with a force compared to an atomic blast. It left about 110 m diameter hole in the ground, presently known as Kaalijarv lake.
7) The Finnish national epic 鈥淜alevala鈥 ( was collected in Karelia (presently mostly in Russia, north from Estonia and St. Petersburg, which is located at Neva river) during the 19th century. The poems were carried through centuries by singers, acting like present day rap-artists: they tried to beat each other by singing poems. In Kalevala, there is a story (poems 47-49) of an 鈥淯kko, the supreme god鈥 which 鈥渕akes a sun and moon by striking fire鈥. The fire is hold and handled by a maiden, standing on 鈥渁 long cloud鈥. She is careless and drops the fire, and the fire comes through the sky and the clouds to the earth causing death and agony among the people. The 鈥渆ternal blacksmith鈥 Ilmarinen and V盲in盲m枚inen, two the most important characters in this poem collection, go and look for the fire and end up at Neva river (about 500 km of the Kaalijarv impact site). The world becomes dark and the sun and the moon disappear (maybe forest fires or local 鈥渘uclear winter鈥 due to dust). Therefore the blacksmith Ilmarinen (ilma = air in English, maa = terra in Latin, maailma = world) forges a new sun and moon out of silver and gold and puts them on top of a tree. However, the sun and the moon remain hidden. Finally, in the poems, the sun and moon come back as a witch lets them out from kind of a prison made of rocks. Please, read Kalevala...
8) Present Kalevala village in Karelia is about 800 km (500 miles) from Kaalijarv impact site. The distance between Kaalijarv and Eisfeld is about 1100 km (700 miles). If Kalevala really describes the Kaalijarv impact, the impact has been most likely seen also in the central Europe, since the distance is comparable.
9) Widsith, a collection of Germanic poems from 7th century lists peoples and their rulers and says, among other things: 鈥淐asere weold Creacum ond C忙lic Finnum鈥. This has been translated as 鈥淐aesar rules the Greeks and C忙lic the Finns鈥. It looks interesting to mention these two peoples in the same sentence, as if they were somehow closely related. It is hard to imagine somebody making such a statement nowadays, although both countries belong to the European Union... C忙lic has been considered as Germanic version of Kaleva, on which the name Kalevala is also based.
10) Sagas, that tell about adventures of Vikings, also mention that some of the Danish, Norse, Swedish kings and even England king of William the Conqueror have their roots in Finland, starting from the ancient Finnish king Fornjot or Fornjotr (see, for instance .
11) The recent genetic data (for instance Tambets et al., Am. Journal of Genetics, 74:661-682, 2004) indicate that the Finns, Karelians and Estonians share partially the same genes with Germanic peoples (of indoeuropean origin). The recent consensus of the origin of the people of Finland is that the present population is based on the neolithic inhabitants. So, their particular 鈥済ene pool鈥 has been there before the Indo-Europeans came to Europe.
Now, it seems possible that the culture of the ancestors of the present Finnic peoples in the ancient days (end of ice age 鈥 500 AD) was much stronger than known nowadays. Actually, we might only see reflections of it in the texts survived to this date. It might also be that this culture was spread over larger areas compared to the present date, especially since the people were effectively using rivers and waters to move around. Similar behavior has been pointed out, for example, by Andres P盲盲bo for the American native peoples, algonquins, in Canada: their language and culture have distributed themselves over one half of the Northern American continent via water routes.
When about 4000 years ago a catastrophic explosion - compared to an atomic blast - shook the earth in the lands of these people, they must have considered that as some kind of sign of god鈥檚 power, as it was the most shattering experience they had ever witnessed 鈥 it would still be. Maybe they even started to worship this event and the dust cloud 鈥渟prung鈥 from the earth. Possibly they carried the memory of the event in their songs and even forged items where they describe it, or possibly tried immediately to bring the sun and moon back by forging the new ones during the 鈥渘uclear winter鈥. Therefore, one possibility to explain the stripe - assumed to be a sun bark - is that is actually 鈥渁 long cloud鈥 on which the maiden is playing with the fire, before she looses her grip and it comes through the skies...So, it could be a memory of a bright streak of light in the sky before the fireball hits the earth...
Based on the above-described background, it would be very attractive to suggest that the Sky Disc of Nebra is an item - forged by some eternal blacksmith Ilmarinen - which collects the conception of the world of the neolithic people that wandered around the lands where the iron giant hit the earth 鈥 including this particular event.
On the other hand, Fabricius says that calendar the Eisfeld people used was called as 鈥淚lmo Terra Renet鈥. Translation of the mixed Latin-Finnish term 鈥淭erra Ilmo鈥 would be 鈥渕aailma = world鈥 in our language. So, it might be the Nebra disc is of that particular calendar type 鈥 and describing the world as known about 3600 years ago by the ancestors of the present Finnic peoples.
Please, just let me know what you think of this.
Sincerely yours,
Markku Oinonen
Vantaa
Finland -
Message 2
Posted by Hossam-Aboulfotouh (U2914961) on Friday, 3rd February 2006
If the sunrise angle that we see it recorded on this Nebra disk (41 degrees on summer solstice) was the sunrise angle of Nebra city that its latitude is about 51.30 degrees or so, this means that what is recorded on this disk is the sunrise angle of 5070 years ago; Its as old as Giza pyramids, site plan of Giza pyramid records the same information too, but for the latitude 30 degrees the sunrise angle of this date was 28.13 degrees, according to my researches and my astro-mathematical equations.
Hossam Aboulfotouh -
Message 3
Posted by lolbeeble (U1662865) on Friday, 3rd February 2006
Cheers Hossam-Aboulfotouh, appreciate the data, that'd put it in central Europe and the stars depicted are thought to be the Plieades aren't they? I had seen speculation it might have originated elsewere and been traded as Bronze scrap but the measurements appear to rule that out.
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Message 4
Posted by Hossam-Aboulfotouh (U2914961) on Saturday, 4th February 2006
Thanks lolbeeble; identifying the constellation of stars is outside my area of specialization; my researches focuses on the solar system, its structure and motions as well as the sciences of the ancient civilizations and other architectonic fields. However, as a general observation, concerning the consolations of stars that appear on the disk, the seven stars at the upper right corner of it seems as Pleiades, the three stars below it, between the moon and the sun, seams as Aries, and the stars on the left side of the sun looks as Taurus or Hayden; showing the night sky on the beginning of April, 5070 years ago. This is very interesting artwork indeed; when I saw this Nebra disk for the first time "yesterday" as it appears at its web site, I thought it may be not a real artifact, but when I checked it, I found it means something outstanding, which is recording one of the most important event for the life people on earth, i.e., the time of one of the major knots. One could write a book about it, i.e., what is the meaning of this knot; the German government should build for it special museum at the same place, having a pyramidal form; I could design it for them recording the same information in the design of the building itself.
In this regard I would like to thank Arcticvs (Markku Oinonen) for opening the discussion on this interesting thread.
Hossam Aboulfotouh
Architectonician -
Message 5
Posted by Hossam-Aboulfotouh (U2914961) on Saturday, 4th February 2006
Correcting a sentence in my previous message: "showing the the night sky on, MID MAY, 5070 years ago."
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Message 6
Posted by Nik (U1777139) on Friday, 10th February 2006
Dear Arcticvs,
Indeed interesting points, not to mention that the line Finland, Esthonia (finno-related languages and tribes) to Lithuania (indo-european related language) is of increased anthropologic interest as it is the meeting point of more than two and largely different anthropoligic tribes: the germanic and the baltic but then also the turkic (no relation to turkish other than the name) and the slavic ones...
I am also aware of the comet that hit the Baltic around 5000-4000 B.C. and actually I had read a strange theory that claimed that this collision through a chain of natural events caused the appearence of blond hair and blue eyes to all surrounding people that where actually of various anthropologic tribes and not one (proto - baltic/germanic/lithuanian/touranic/slavic), according to distance from the impact point, tribes got various degrees of blondness thus you had a lot of Dinaric (at that time they were still west of Caucasus) and perhaps a few Mediterraneans that were habitating up to southern Poland.... I cannot abide to such a theory (it is too abstract, then I do not know how such a collision can cause that kind of pigmentation...) - afterall blond hair is also found in Aboriginals (of Indo-dravidian origins) who are living in the other side of the globe. However indeed we have to note down that the most blond populations on earth are still living in a circle around the Baltics which might suggest that this pigmentation might have started there (while another separate one had started in Australia).
In anyway, not knowing much for the area I simply note down your information and note down only one thing. You are correct in saying that Finnish and Esthonians have genes in common with the Germanic people that arrived later in the area, and it is logical to suggest that it was from that later contact that this was dirived. It is also obvious that Finnish people lived the area long before germanic people arrived. Though the closest indo-European speaking people in the area were actually the proto-Lithuanians (who at those times were more widespread since the proto-Slavs were still a bit southeastern and it is also natural that Lithuanians also contributed to an extend to the modern gene of Baltics (though they mostly donated to their eastern neighbours the slavs).
However, I am not quite certain if Baltic people are more ancient that other tribes of Indo-European language (though I personally do not recognise any indo-european tribe, that thing never existed). You mention:
"The recent consensus of the origin of the people of Finland is that the present population is based on the neolithic inhabitants. So, their particular 鈥済ene pool鈥 has been there before the Indo-Europeans came to Europe".
I comment it below... -
Message 7
Posted by Nik (U1777139) on Friday, 10th February 2006
To comment whether Baltic people are more ancient than other "indo-europeans" in the land now called Europe we have to make some distinctions. I have repeatedly called for the following distinction of the european anthropologic races, that is not very popular among many commentators here, though nobody ever presented any valid argument against it or came across with a better distinction:
There are several generic anthropologic races that nowdays are included in the european family: the main are the Mediterranean (examples Greece, south Italy etc.), the Nordic (northern Germans, Danish etc.), the Baltic (Esthonians, Finnish, Latvians etc.), Dinaric (Albanians, most ex-Yugoslavians), Alpine (central western Europe, no good examples today (even ancient Celts are no examples) though concentrate around North Italy, Austria, Switzerland and eastern France) Armenoid (Armenians, partially ancient Jewish and northern 'Semitics', more than 50% of modern Turks of Turkey, some Iranians etc.).
As you see these are generic anthropologic races and despite their often misleading names have absolutely nothing to do with modern or historic states, nations, religions and languages. They are distinguished according to their primary anatomical differences and make no use of secondary traits like eye/hair colour (since same colour is found in largely different races) and height - the latter often the result of nutritional conditions (it is known that hunters around the world had a healthy a bit more 1,75cm average while agriculturers an ill less than 1,65cm one).
Now these certain generic anthropologic groups are considered to have different stories and certain precede others - the history of most ancient is lost in those early times of humanity while others are the result of the meeting of two generic races (that exist today or existed in larger numbers back then). The Baltic is supposed to be in the second category - being the result of the meeting of nordic-north dinaric races with touranic (vague name for any mixture of any of mongolic tribes with any of the aforementioned tribes). Thus either this "meeting" happened around the Baltic in Neolithic times or earlier in Palaiolithic times east of the Baltics, in any case I do not see clearly how the Baltics are more ancient than other european tribes even in that area - personally I think Lithuanians are the oldest habitants of the area.
I have also to note down that such mixtures and meetings happened not only in neolithic but also in Paleolithic times - it is suggested the the original (now lost) Alpic tribe was a distant cousin of the Baltic one created by an even earlier arrival of touranic tribes in Europe... one thing is for sure, Attila and the Huns, the Golden Horde in Russia, were the last invasions (Otthomans cannot be seriously be included in that due to the small percentage of touranics in their armies, they were more bound by religion and language than gene bonds) in a series of many such invasions from the east - a natural motion of populations if one bears in mind the geography.
Implying though that indo-european speakers were brought in Europe in one such movement (like Slavs were pushed by Huns and Tatars) is not a safe argument as Europe was well populated even in Palaiolithic times, then there is nothing to suggest that one people managed to linguistically prevail all over Europe in those times - there are no archaiological findings to suggest that, afterall the time scales (of language diversion which point out between 6000 and 3000) are not verifying anything, not to mention the Greek paradox, a language primary example of the "indo-european" family, which though, has more than 40% of its words of non-indoeuropean origins achieving however complete word-rooting (i.e. taking words and retrieving their roots) which is of course irrational with the so-called-fact that 40% is non-indoeuropean (in that case, an important percentage of words would have unknown roots). I think there can be found more examples to explain why the indo-european myth is false other than the greek example, but then this is one really stands out as the primary since it is based on the most studied and longest studied language in the world (i.e. with a precicely known history of evolution) and one of the earliest written ones, and the earliest written european language.
In any case, there is still no proof of which tribes first populated Europe. Neaderdals can put claims, but then these were cousins not homo Sapiens. I am personally more inclined to Mediterranean - Nordic and Alpine being the oldest ones,
PS for those who will think other things...: Some might suggest that Mediterraneans saw influx from the east (agriculture that came from the east etc.) - there is no real proof of that (e.g. Myceneans did not look at all eastern and even Cretans and Cycladians (in case these were very different to myceneans) differed substatially from non-coastal middle Easterners as our beloved old testament states) - I am more inclined to the idea that the opposite happened: Meditteraneans had moved to the east via the sea thus Mediterranising the area near the coast. -
Message 8
Posted by Nik (U1777139) on Friday, 10th February 2006
To get back to your main topic (cos as usual I generalised it and got in another staff - that is though relevant, speaking for those times), I learned about the Nebra disk from you, and thanks for that. It seems that this new discovery is really moving people quite a lot (central Europeans, like all people around the world feel also the need of discovering their distant past) and it interested me a lot.
Now, I did not clearly got the point of your sayings so I might get the wrong conclusion:
The Nebra disk was found in Germany, thus in Central Europe quite a distance from Finland and Esthonia. Are you suggesting that the disk was made originally in the Baltics, then traded down to Germany where it was found millenia later (today!). Or are you suggesting that Finnish-related people habitated at those times all around the Baltics up to central Europe?
Or are you suggesting what I mostly understood:
After the collision and blast of the meteorite and the destruction of the local civilisations around the Baltic sea, there was created a religion closely related to the "events of the sky", with a more intense interest in astronomy, a religion which spread through various tribes (since it was not only the Baltic tribes that suffered from that event but others also), which covered a greater part of Europe from North East up to central Europe.
The first case - the disk being made in Finland or Esthonia and travelling to Germany - is not irrational though difficult to be proved - usually archaiologists link the object with the place it was found unless there is something on it that shouts its origins (e.g. an art work that is known to us, a stone found only in a specific land etc.).
The third case - the spread of a similar religion across the people that were mostly struck by the catastrophe - is my favourite. I make the analogy with the people of Crete who after the earthquakes caused by the eruption of Thera (worst volcanic eruption since dawn of mankind as far as I remember) changed the hierarchy of their gods and a god of sea went ahead mother earth (that nice one that holds the snakes and wears a dress we wish modern women would wear also today!!!). I do not see any reason why the same would not happen with the destruction in the Baltics: it destroyed not one but several local civilisations, thus people tended to alter their local religions in a similar manner focusing more than previously in the sky and the study of the stars - not to mention that a global acceptance of such a religion by many different tribes would increase their feelings of security. Afterall it is well known that all ancient tribes were making links with the gods of their neighbours (like Greeks, Egyptians, Romans, Celtics, not to mention Jewish-related ones, the links of Judaism to Egyptian religion are well known while the birth of Christ is suspiciously similar to the birth of indian Chrisna, correct me if I am wrong, things like Herod and the children, or the image of God on earth etc.). I find it logical that after this event the tribes around the Baltics but in a greater area (reaching central Europe) would have adopted pretty much a common religion associated with the sky.
The second case of Finnish related people living up to Germany is another interesting one. Nordic-Germanic people are thought to originate from Danemark and north Germany from where they spread via boats to Sweden and Norway as well as progressively to the west and south later in historic years). Nordics on the one and later Slavs on the other are largely responsible for the shrinking of Finno-esthonian as well as the Lithuanian (of "indo-european" generic language group) populations that once were the predominant in north eastern Europe. Thus, accepting that Finno-Esthonians were covering a greater part of north eastern Europe and if we assume that Nordics started displacing the Finno-Esthonians after the 3nd millenium BC then the disk could be the make of Finnish-related people. Even in that case, that does not make the Finnish as older habitants of Eastern Europe: it does not changes the fact that all Baltics were the byproduct (this word has absolutely no negative sense here!) of the meeting of proto-europeans (how can I say it? was it proto-nordics or proto-dinarics? perhaps the first judging from anatomy) with touranic people, thus in any case Finnish cannot be the most ancient. Not to mention that taking for granted (though nothing is proved) the derivation of Alpics from a slight influence of an even more ancient invasion of touranics in Europe (eastern Europe was always an open door for any guest, and guests were coming even before the advent of horseriders).
I personally believe that proto-european tribes were of average to tall height (always depending on nutritional conditions), large head and forehead, usually of long face rather than round, shorter analogy of hands/legs to body and with a lot of body hair. -
Message 9
Posted by thegoodbadugly (U2942713) on Sunday, 12th February 2006
this is a brilliant post,i have seen this disc and was very impressed,its exsistence proves that 5000 years ago people were studying the star system and were a lot more inteligent than thought of,
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Message 10
Posted by Arcticvs (U3120042) on Monday, 13th February 2006
Dear Nikolaos,
Thanks a lot for your message. Thanks also for other participants in this discussion. You had very interesting comments on religions of ancient peoples and they made me have more faith on my idea.
You asked to clarify my meaning. I agree with you and am not very convinced that the Nebra disc would have been forged in the present Finnish/Estonian territory. I believe it is made by a very skilled - maybe local - blacksmith, who might have had the same cultural/linguistical background than the Finnic peoples occupying the Estonia/Karelia at that time. The blacksmith Ilmarinen of Kalevala epic should possibly be considered as a sum of those very appreciated group of forging masters, that earned their reputation during the Bronze age. Having the same culture/language the knowledge on a catastrophic event as the Kaalijarv meteorite (or Illumetsa, by the way: Estonia was also hit by another one few thousands of years ago...) could have spread effectively through the lands and via the waters. So, actually, my ideas are kind of combination of your cases 2) and 3).
When talking about the ages of different peoples, my level of expertise does not allow to state too much on the nature of the proto-european people. However, I would just like to point out some interesting results obtained recently in various fields of research.
First on craniofacial measurements ( by comparing skull shapes of european peoples to the skull shapes of our Cro-Magnon ancestors, it looks like the Finnish people are the closest ones. This might be explained as follows: the Finns have remained fairly isolated from the agricultural invasion to Europe and their eating habits have remained closest to the original Cro-Magnon ones (hunting and thus eating meat). So, somebody could try to find the remnants of the Cro-Magnon appearance by looking at the faces of the typical present-day & non-veggie Finns
!
Another interesting issue has shaken the linguistical community in Finland very properly during the recent years. A hypothesis of the present Scandinavians and Germans being originally the same peoples as the Finnic peoples has been presented by Kalevi Wiik, a professor(emeritus) of phonetics(I hope this is a correct word). So, during flow of proto-indoeuropean peoples in Europe, the typical blond and blue-eyed original northern and partially central-european peoples would have changed their language from their 鈥渓ingua-franca鈥 (possibly Finno-Ugric) to indoeuropean language possibly due to new inventions related to agriculture. However, traditional linguistical evidence for this scheme has been (by traditional linguistics, by the way!) kept weak. I believe it is since the linguistical evidence takes us only down to about 5000 BC, but at least genetical data much further back in time. Genetically and phonetically the scheme seems possible. Naturally, this scheme does not rule out significance mixing of original central european and indoeuropean people. Actually, it would require it to explain the present differences in the genetical data between the present central europeans and northern europeans. Maybe then this mixture would have pushed the non-mixed Finnic peoples to their fairly isolated regions allowing them to keep partially their Cro-Magnon roots.
Furthermore, it is interesting to consider the fact that the Finnish language does not have gender i.e. there is no separation between feminine and masculine. Maria Gimbutas has proposed the proto-european societies being matriarchal and indoeuropeans patriarchal. If accepting the Finnic peoples carrying some remnants of those matriarchal cultures, the gender-wise differences between the present indoeuropean languages and the Finnic languages could be possibly accounted for.
I believe if one would consider the above discussion, my idea of the origin of the Nebra disc could possibly become even more feasible.
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